Author: DavidNYC

Via SG, the North Carolina’s News & Observer sayeth:

Attorney General Roy Cooper said he hopes to make a decision on whether to challenge Republican Sen. Richard Burr some time this spring, Rob Christensen reports.

“I want to continue with public service to the people of North Carolina,” Cooper said Tuesday morning after attending a meeting of the Council of State. “I’m going to determine the best way to do that. I’m going to decide that very soon.”

Technically speaking, that gives Cooper until June 20th to make up his mind – summer officially starts on the 21st. A few other folks have also offered some soft deadlines.

RI-Gov – Lincoln Chafee (I):

But in a visit to Barrington Congregational Church, where he spoke about America’s world role in the post-Bush era, the 56-year-old Chafee said again that he is “very, very interested” in running and will decide this spring, based on whether he thinks he can raise the money to run a campaign and whether he has a chance to win. …

He said he expects to decide on a gubernatorial run when the fellowship ends in May.

NY-Sen-B – Peter King (R):

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y), the leading Republican contender for the New York Senate seat, praised newly-appointed Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and said he won’t decide whether to run against her until this summer.

OR-Gov – Greg Walden (R):

Whatever the case, Walden sounds like he’ll be quicker to make a decision about the governorship than DeFazio. While the Democrat said he has no deadline, Walden said he wants to make his intentions clear by summer.

FL-Sen – Charlie Crist (R):

Few Republicans are entering the race so far. Most are waiting a decision from Governor Charlie Crist, who says he’ll make an annoucement on whether or not he’ll make a run for Washington after the state legislative session wraps up in May.

Do you know of any others? Please let us know in comments (with links). Thanks!

Chris Van Hollen announced today at a press conference that no House Dem freshman turned down help from the DCCC’s Frontline program. Last cycle, Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (NH-01) initially spurned Frontline but later had the sense to change her mind, which is why she’s still in Congress. Meanwhile, the only member who strong-armed the DCCC until the bitter end apparently learned her lesson the very, very hard way:

Van Hollen also said [former KS-02 Rep. Nancy] Boyda left him a regretful voicemail that she told him to play for any other vulnerable member toying with the idea of skipping out on Frontline.

“All of our new members have learned from the mistakes of two in the former class who did not participate,” Van Hollen said. “Nancy Boyda has been very clear about the fact that she made a mistake.

“It’s a great message, because she clearly felt that not participating was a good part of the reason she failed.”

Good, at least, that she is putting herself out there as a cautionary tale for others. The DCCC is quite skilled at incumbent protection. It’ll be long time before anyone forgets that.

Hot on the heels of Jim Folsom’s announcement that he’ll run for another term as Lt. Gov., term-limited Ag Comm’r Ron Sparks looks like he’ll be running for the open governor’s seat:

State Agriculture and Industries Commissioner Ron Sparks said Wednesday he plans to hold a series of press conferences that will conclude in Fort Payne on Friday to announce his campaign plans for 2010. …

Sparks indicated Wednesday afternoon his plans are to run against Congressman Artur Davis for governor. Davis is the only Democrat who has declared a run for the top state seat so far.

“I will not run against Jim Folsom,” said Sparks, who would not elaborate on his statement.

Assuming Sparks does take the plunge (as looks likely), this sets up what could be a very contentious primary with Rep. Artur Davis. One of the reasons Sparks sat out a race against Sen. Jeff Sessions last cycle was to avoid precisely this kind of internecine battle – state Sen. Vivian Figures insisted on making what turned out to be a rather quixotic run. So I’m not sure why he’d want to get into the mix now, especially with a much more formidable opponent.

Sparks lives in AL-03, and as a several folks have suggested, it could be fertile territory for another Democratic challenge. But seeing as Sparks is holding four different press conferences around the state to announce his next move, that’s not in the cards.

Huh. I never thought I’d write a post quite like this, but here we are. It’s the day after election day, and Scott Murphy’s narrow lead has now shrunk to just 25 votes (according to the AP). Thousands of absentee ballots are outstanding, and no one is quite sure how they’ll come down (though some Dems are hazarding a few guesses).

So we go back to the drawing board. The old predictions get cast out the window. What say you now? Share your prognostications in comments, and be sure to vote in the poll (click here or check below the fold). If you make a new prediction, tell us – exactly how many votes will the winner win by?

From the Daily News:

As of yesterday evening, the board had canvassed the 10 counties in the 20th and discovered that 10,055 absentee ballots had been issued by seven counties and 5,906 had been returned.

That number could go up, as three counties haven’t provided their numbers. Absentee ballots must be received by April 7, but the ballots sent in by overseas/federal/military voters (recall that there was a fight over those) can arrive by April 13 and still be counted.

Of the 10,055 absentees, the Repubicans have a roughly 600-ballot edge, according to the board. But of the 5,906 received to date, 798 more came from Republicans.

These numbers might be good news for Scott Murphy. Accord to the NYS BoE (PDF, p. 9), enrollment in the 20th is 42R-26D-24I. If those percentages had held among the 5,906 absentee ballots returned so far, there would have been 2,468 GOP ballots vs. 1,547 Dem ballots – a margin of 921. But we know that the GOP only has a 798-ballot edge.

Still, as the quoted material makes plain, there’s a lot of time for more absentees to come in, and thus plenty of room for these numbers to wiggle. Hang on to your hats.

(Hat-tip: Shinigami)

Be sure to join us after polls close at 9pm Eastern time tonight as we liveblog the results of the NY-20 special election featuring Dem Scott Murphy vs. Republican Jim Tedisco. In case you missed it, earlier today, Crisitunity posted a table of “county benchmarks” to indicate how well Murphy would need to do in each jurisdiction within the 20th in order to pull off a win. Also, if you still want to get in a prediction, pop into this thread and tell us what your crystal ball says.

Results will be available from the AP here. If you know of any other good local sites for results, please let us know in comments.

Awesome news:

In a potentially decisive ruling, a panel of three judges today ordered up to 400 new absentee ballots opened and counted, far fewer than Republican Norm Coleman had sought in his effort to overcome a lead held by DFLer Al Franken.

The ballots appear to include many that Franken had identified as wrongly rejected as well as ballots that Coleman wanted opened. About half come from Hennepin, Ramsey and St. Louis counties, places Franken won by significant margins. …

Coleman had asked the panel early in the trial to consider counting 4,800 rejected absentee ballots. But rulings by the judges effectively narrowed the field to less than 3,000, and Coleman ended up asking the panel to count 1,369 and consider roughly another 400 rejected by him and Franken during the recount.

Norm Coleman’s hopeless zombie attempts to overturn the results of this election are dealt a mortal blow – though that won’t, apparently, stop him from appealing.

Memo to Harry Reid: Seat Al Franken now. Love, Swing State.

Not terribly surprising:

U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra kicked off his campaign for governor in Detroit this morning. ….

Hoekstra was first elected to Congress in 1992 and rose through the ranks to become chairman of the powerful House Intelligence Committee, a position he held until Democrats won control of the House of Representatives in 2006. He remains the ranking minority member of the committee.

Before winning elective office, Hoekstra was an executive at Herman Miller Furniture Co. in Zeeland.

He joins a crowded field of potential Republican candidates for the state’s top job, including: state Sen. Tom George of Texas Township, Attorney General Mike Cox, Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land.

Hoekstra had said several months ago that he wouldn’t seek a tenth term in the House. The question then was whether he’d retire or look to move up, and now we have our answer. Hoekstra’s main competition right now looks to be AG Mike Cox. The primary is a long way off – August 3, 2010.

Open seat fans also have a legitimate reason to be intriged by MI-02. Swing State Project’s analysis shows that after supporting Republican presidential candidates by twenty points for two cycles in a row, Obama surged here, holding McCain to a narrow 51-48 win. As James noted previously, the fact that McCain dissed Michigan late in the game undoubtedly killed his numbers statewide, so this may be a high-water mark for Dems. Nonetheless, there may be some promise here. Any thoughts on potential candidates?

Okay, folks, prediction time: Will Sarah Palin seek re-election as Alaska governor? If she did run for a second gubernatorial term, that would make it difficult if not impossible to run for president in 2012, for a variety of reasons: a) she’d be dogged by questions about her future daily; b) she wouldn’t be able to spend much if any time preparing for the presidential run; c) she’d open herself up to a primary challenge; and d) even if she won, she’d have to turn around on election night and start running for president right away – creating yet another fertile avenue for attacks on her character.

Then again, Palin’s political skills anywhere outside of an arena packed with rabid supporters & a teleprompter are weak, and her staff has no idea what it’s doing. So I could see her thinking she could pull off both. If she has any sense, though, she’d wait until 2016 (she’s certainly young enough) and use a second term in the statehouse to repair her image and build up the team necessary to fight Mitt Romney.

But anyhow, I don’t went to delve too far into presidential politics on this site. Mostly I’m interested in the question I posed above. Please share your thoughts in comments & take the poll – it’s below the fold.

Ugh:

Former Rep. Ed Case (D-Hawaii) wants to come back to Capitol Hill. The former two-term Member entered the race Saturday for retiring Rep. Neil Abercrombie’s (D) seat.

Abercrombie announced last month that he was running for governor, opening up his Honolulu-based district for a slew of candidates in Hawaii looking to take higher office. Case represented the 2nd district for two full terms before stepping down in 2006 to challenge Sen. Daniel Akaka in the Democratic primary. Case lost his challenge to Akaka, but has since openly discussed another bid for governor or the House.

“I represented Manoa and Makiki for eight years in our state legislature, have crisscrossed the First in two statewide campaigns, and have addressed its needs in Congress,” Case said in a statement. “I know the First, and I know I can represent its 600,000 citizens well in Congress.”

In Hawaii, it is not uncommon or illegal for candidates to run in either Congressional district. Case’s predecessor, the late Rep. Patsy Mink (D) represented both districts over the course of her 24-year Congressional career.

Case is the only announced Democratic candidate so far, although Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann, state House Majority Leader Kirk Caldwell, state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa and former state Rep. Brian Schatz have also been mentioned as possible candidates.

Hardcore DLC’er Ed Case hails from the same school which has produced some of our dimmest, most annoying lights: Harold Ford, Dan Boren, Bob Kerrey, Joe Lieberman. He sucked the first time he was in the House – hopefully a strong progressive like Colleen Hanabusa will get in so that we can help deny him a second opportunity to muck things up.